


The Wendigo

by NebulousMistress



Category: American Mythology, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Monsters, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 04:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12403119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: It's scary story time at the Athosian camp. Sheppard should have stuck to the classics.





	The Wendigo

**Author's Note:**

> Halloween is coming and the weird ideas are beginning to pop up. This year, if I get enough of them, I might do an unconnected series of monster fics. In which case, I pick on Rodney first. I always pick on Rodney first. Poor Rodney.

The night was dark, the moon unrisen. The fire in the Athosian camp burned merrily under the starry sky. Atlantis drifted somewhere over the horizon, meandering the currents of this world while the Athosians began to build this continent into something civilized, something tamed.

All around them the untamed lurked and rumbled and hooted in the night. The forest was glorious, virginal, eternal. Eyes watched them from all angles, even the sky had eyes that hovered just over the treetops where night birds stood on their boughs and stared. Eyes watched and glared and wondered at these Athosians who cleared the trees and planted seedling vines in long rows.

In the firelight John Sheppard poked at the charred meat of the strange animal the hunters had brought down and dragged in earlier. Aiden Ford played with children nearly his height, falling to their superior numbers as they all laughed and tackled him over some wad of rubber stuffed with grass he called a 'football'. Teyla sat talking with Halling, discussing the settlement, the time it would take to expand it from a camp into a true village. Rodney McKay sat by the fire, hands dripping with meat juices as he held a length of bone from the night's meal and tore chunks off with his teeth.

“We should do a scary story or something,” Sheppard said.

Rodney rolled his eyes and swallowed heavily. “Not another one,” he whined. “I don't care how many times you retell the annals of Jason, you're not making _Friday the 13th_ scary.”

“Fine then, you try it,” Sheppard dared. “It's harder than it looks.”

Rodney tore off a chunk of meat and chewed as he pondered. He looked up at the stars, his night-adapted eyes picking out the shapeless drifts and veils of stars of the Pegasus galaxy. A single meteor burned just on the edge of his vision, dim even in this night. He considered it.

He looked at the bone still in his hands then at Sheppard. Yes, he could tell a story. He **should** tell a story. “Fine,” Rodney said, wiping animal grease off of his chin. “I will.”

“We have this invention,” Sheppard drawled. “It's a paper square we call a 'napkin'.” Still he called out to the camp that 'scary story time' was about to start.

Sheppard ignored the whiny quality of the groaning and the 'do we have to' sentiment.

“Dr. McKay's going to tell the story tonight,” Sheppard said. He also ignored how that stopped the groaning and the whining and brought all the children to the fire. He sat down among the children, still ignoring how most of the camp's adults had joined them as well. He wasn't that bad at scary stories.

Rodney took a nervous breath. A glance at Sheppard's 'I dare you' leer robbed him of some of that nervousness. He could do this. He took one last bite of his meal, stripping the last bit of meat from bare bone. He licked the juices from his hand, uncaring how they stained his face.

“What's the scariest thing you can think of?” Rodney began. He didn't wait for an answer, he knew what their answer would be. “The Wraith, of course. But why? It's not the Wraith themselves, though they are scary. It's the idea of being eaten alive and there's nothing you can do about it. Having to watch those you love around you all suffer the same fate, knowing you're next.”

Rodney gave an easy smile to the assembled. The adults already did not look amused.

“We have something similar on Earth,” he said. “The others may deny it but they never lived in Canada. Canada is a cold place where it snows two thirds of the year and sometimes the sun forgets to rise for months.” He sighed happily. “Ah, I miss it. Hiding inside from the cold and the snow and the wendigo.”

“The wendigo's not real,” Aiden said.

“How do you know?” Rodney asked. “You're not from Canada. You've never hidden under the kitchen table with your whole family while the wendigo howls. You've never felt its hunger claw at your insides. You've never heard it call your name.”

Rodney paused as he looked around the fire at his audience. The children were all listening to him with wide eyes and wider ears. He smiled, teeth glinting in the firelight. “The wendigo is the King of Winter,” he said. “He is the cold, the dark, the howling wind and the incessant hunger. Life in Canada used to be harder than it is now. The growing season used to be so short and the animals so thin, the ice sheets so thick the land itself was smothered under endless white.”

Sheppard rolled his eyes as Rodney mixed his eras. But he had to admit it kept the kids' attention.

“What does the wendigo look like?” Wex asked.

“The wendigo has several forms,” Rodney admitted. “Some say the wendigo looks like a starved man, all skin and bones with claws on his hands and blood seeping from his eyes. He runs so fast his feet catch fire and he sobs in the night from the pain of it. He runs so fast across the treetops that his feet burn off from the heat of his speed and leaves him in agony. You can tell when he's near by his screams.”

Rodney took a deep breath and screamed into the night, the trees catching his voice and carrying it off to the sky. “Oh, oh this fiery height!” he screamed. “Oh my feet of fire, my burning feet of fire!”

He shuddered at the words and had to take a breath to steady himself. As he opened his eyes he saw he held the attention of the entire camp now. He continued. “Sometimes, when the wendigo is hunting its favorite prey, it looks like a great gaunt thing with claws on its hands and hooves for feet. It has giant antlers and it's head is a bare skull with big sharp teeth that constantly drip drool because it's so hungry.” He held his hands behind his head to show what the wendigo's antlers might look like. The firelight took things a step further, the shadows seeming to grow in the trees behind him.

“But the worst is what the wendigo looks like when it's found its favorite prey,” Rodney continued. “It eats people, of course. But it never eats alone. It waits until winter is at its deepest, when you've run out of food and there's no way to grow more. When the storms are at their worst, when the snowfall is so thick you'll get lost and die of cold if you try to seek help. When you're so desperate for food you'll eat your own tent, so cold you've burned all the wood you have left. That's when the wendigo hunts. It waits, just outside your home, just outside the light of your fire, and chooses a victim. Sometimes it's your father, sometimes your mother or your brother or sister, sometimes it's you. But it will choose and then it will call its victim's name.”

Rodney took a deep breath and then let it out in a huff. “No, that would be cruel,” he said.

“And then what happens?” Jinto asked.

“The wendigo is patient,” Rodney said. “It knows you're not going to come outside. You're not going to brave the storm to find it. You're not that stupid. So it calls your name over and over, sometimes whispering it on the wind, sometimes sobbing it pitifully outside your window, sometimes screaming it in the voices of animals. But it will call your name and it will wait. It will wait until you give in.”

Sheppard had a bad feeling he knew where this was going. “Rodney,” he warned.

“The wendigo never eats alone,” Rodney continued, ignoring Sheppard's warning. “And it won't eat you. No, it doesn't call your name because it wants to eat you. It calls your name because it wants you to join it in a feast.” He grinned. His eyes seemed dark in the firelight. “When you sleep it will take your mind from you and together you'll both feed. Because the horror of the wendigo isn't that it eats people. Of course it eats people, that's its favorite food. The horror of the wendigo is that it controls its victim and makes them eat people too, starting with their own family. And only when you're done will it give you your mind back.”

Rodney sat back in satisfaction when he saw the dawning horror on all the children's faces before him.

“But the worst form a wendigo takes, and the only form in which it can be killed, is its victim who wanders into town after the Spring thaw, the well-fed victim grown sleek and fat on his own family's flesh, and has to admit that he has become the wendigo. It used to be the man was hanged for murder but now that Canada has found ways to grow food through the winter and keep everyone fed, well...”

“Is it gone?” Wex asked.

“Not quite,” Rodney admitted. “The wendigo still hunts. In fact, it's had to range further than ever before to find someone to share its favorite food with. It could just kill people, and it does, don't get me wrong, but what it wants most is someone to share in the hunt. Someone to carry off screaming into the night. Someone who will help it kill.”

“Has it...” Anika cleared her throat to find her voice. “And if it finds someone?”

Rodney looked at her, his eyes still eerily dark in the firelight. “The wendigo will not ally with the Wraith,” he assured her. “The wendigo prefers its victim to be unwilling, especially at first. The act of making someone do such horrible things is half the fun.”

“And we'd have to have a wendigo among us,” Sheppard said. “But we don't because they don't exist.”

Rodney looked offended. His shadow seemed ominous as his offense shifted into something horrible. “And yet, I know what the wendigo sounds like.” His dark eyes seemed to shine black in the dancing firelight, the illusion making his teeth seem longer as he grinned. His shadow behind must also be an illusion, the antlers a trick of the trees and the light. “I've heard it sobbing outside my window. I've heard it scream in the endless night. I've heard it call my name. I was eight years old when the wendigo called my name, John. And now... I am the wendigo.”

Sheppard pulled his sidearm as children went still with sudden real terror.

Rodney laughed. The sound echoed in the trees and sounded like screaming. He stood up and wiped the grease and drool from his mouth. “Do it, Sheppard,” he said. “I dare you.”

Sheppard stood still. He cocked his gun and... he couldn't do it.

And then Rodney was gone as something bounded through the trees and the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://nebulousmistress.tumblr.com/) where you can find a hundred little fanfics I never posted here. Check it out, drop a line, maybe dare me to write something for you.


End file.
